Sometimes while sitting in meetings talking once again about the revolution due to sweep our out moded education system to one side I forget that I've spent more than 25 years using different kinds of technology in the classroom and the workplace.
In all that time I still haven't got away from using a keyboard as my main input tool - I was trying to get all of my students to wordprocess their essays in 1986. You can't imagine how challenging that was.
There were folks then and there still are those who staunchly challenge the notion that most folk should be able to use a keyboard to compose simple messages for blogging , emailing ,etc and for doing a lot more too.
You would not survive long in most workplaces without having some rudimentary skills.
The thing that still annoys me is that a lot of these superior voices around things like basic ICT skills do their postings from well designed and formatted blogs or worse from professional media and not in handwritten notes. I'd wager too that their once pristine copperplate is rustier than it has ever been. My handwriting is now awful and reserved for birthday cards and personal greetings - even for most things work I fall back on an electronic signature.
I was therefore delighted last week to hear that my daughter who is in primary four is getting some basic keyboard skills and is keen to key her stories into the word processor.
To illustrate and admittedly probably greatly handicapped by my indigenous Glaswegian accent I had a go at using the Dragon speech to text app to save me keying in all of this - I like the fantasy of the cats bit.
I guess someone will pick up on me for promoting dull things like the use of word processing , spreadsheets , databases and presentation software but it is a basic skill .
It would be great if any responses by those in the anti-keyboarding lobby were added below, without the use of a keyboard ;-)
In all that time I still haven't got away from using a keyboard as my main input tool - I was trying to get all of my students to wordprocess their essays in 1986. You can't imagine how challenging that was.
There were folks then and there still are those who staunchly challenge the notion that most folk should be able to use a keyboard to compose simple messages for blogging , emailing ,etc and for doing a lot more too.
You would not survive long in most workplaces without having some rudimentary skills.
The thing that still annoys me is that a lot of these superior voices around things like basic ICT skills do their postings from well designed and formatted blogs or worse from professional media and not in handwritten notes. I'd wager too that their once pristine copperplate is rustier than it has ever been. My handwriting is now awful and reserved for birthday cards and personal greetings - even for most things work I fall back on an electronic signature.
I was therefore delighted last week to hear that my daughter who is in primary four is getting some basic keyboard skills and is keen to key her stories into the word processor.
To illustrate and admittedly probably greatly handicapped by my indigenous Glaswegian accent I had a go at using the Dragon speech to text app to save me keying in all of this - I like the fantasy of the cats bit.
Sometimes chicken is noting because I still haven't got the keyboard still force is going to keep challenging the notion that most folks should be given to use one to compose suddenly suitable union except you and I survived Lord knows what places without having some rudimentary skills is that still annoys me is all of the superior voices I don't think that basic ICT skills do the postings were designed for McDonald's and handwritten and I waited to it once Christine is rustier than ever was my own ratings of fantasy of the cats get someone
I guess someone will pick up on me for promoting dull things like the use of word processing , spreadsheets , databases and presentation software but it is a basic skill .
It would be great if any responses by those in the anti-keyboarding lobby were added below, without the use of a keyboard ;-)
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